Reality Check
by acronychal
Summary: HP crossover. In the process of rewriting. Some do not belong in that state of perpetual sleep and false reality.
1. Chapter 1

_Disclaimer: Harry Potter is JK Rowling's, The Matrix is The Wachowski Brothers'._

His eyes hurt.

_'Take me with you,' Those grey eyes said. Pleading, yet holding bac__k. _

He really couldn't open them, the lights were too bright.

_"What is the Matrix?" A question from eons and eons ago, the hand extended, inviting and –in the strangest sense – forbidding._

Voices. Fuzzy. Around him. He couldn't understand it.

_"Harry, don't go… Harry he looks dangerous…_

"Harry…"

_He grasped the arm firmly. An ascent began. No broom, how strange._

"Harry, can you hear me?"

_The screaming brown eyed girl blurred out of vision. The vast green grounds and blue reflecting lake blurred into a choice. _

_And in its place…_

"Light… hurts my eyes."

"It's fine," a deep voice voiced in, "It is the first time you use them."

"Am I dead? Did Voldemort..?"

"No, you are anything but dead. Don't worry about all that now."

Someone had told him not to worry. For the first time in four years, he really allowed Voldemort to skip over and leave his mind.


	2. Chapter 2

_Disclaimer: Harry Potter is JK Rowling's, The Matrix is The Wachowski Brothers'._

His hands slammed into the white ground- surroundings - thing.

'No!'

'Why are you finding this hard to believe?' The man's deep voice came back, getting to his head.

'You're telling me, my _parents _died … _Cedric _died… for _nothing_!'

'No. I'm telling you they never died, because they never really existed.'

Harry glared at the man before him. He should loath him, he should want to rip him apart for desecrating everything dear, sacred and loved.

Instead he was relieved by Morpheus' question, 'How are you feeling?'

Harry was ... enraged? Furious? Incensed?

But his voice knew the real answer. 'Tired,' He sighed out. 'Tired, and yet, relieved.'

'How so?'

'It's… that life… isn't real, and I'm in reality, outside.'

The man smiled, it was a smile which spoke volumes, restricted and soft, but wise and knowing.

'You are starting to believe.'

In a flash a strange sensation enveloped his brain, as if a trickle of cold water had penetrated from the point where the top of his neck met his skull. With amazing speed, it flowed everywhere in his head, rushing him back to his senses, and then rebounding, as if being drained away by the metal currently exiting the back of his head.

'You alright?' The young boy asked. Apart from Harry, the only youth on the vessel he had been introduced to a few hours before was this boy. Apparently his name was The Kid, which Harry found hard to believe at first.

Morpheus flanked him staring down at him in anticipation, Harry sat up, rubbing the back of his neck, hands contacting the cold metal there. The Kid's his short brown hair and his kind eyes came into focus in front of him, so did a black man with dreadlocks, and a woman with messy, blonde-white hair which stuck up everywhere, reminding him of Tonks.

_Who isn't real._

They all regarded him with interest. In normal circumstances, he would have felt awkward, sitting like this, being examined. But nothing was normal about this situation. All he felt mattered now was the realisations coming into being in his head. The ebbing away of the sickening shock, and the forming of an unparalleled calm.

_This feels real._ _And I feel really sleepy._

He gave out a long, relaxed yawn. And the woman with the interesting hair suggested a nap. To which he wholeheartedly agreed to, much to his examiners' amusement.

'Rest now, wizard. There's plenty of time to dwell on things later.'

_Wizard._

What he was, what he used to believe in.

'You know, you're the first one freed from your kind,' spiky-hair stated, 'Very exciting, usually you guys are so taken in by that world you never doubt reality.'

'First wizard freed?' He repeated.

'First ever, very exciting' She smiled, 'Look kid, trust us. This whole thing, it is worth it.'

'My name's Kid.' The brown haired boy teased.

She ignored him. 'Would you like some rest, Harry?'

He nodded, silently, there was much still he had to think about. 'I'm Cas, by the way, and this is Link, and you haven't met ….'

'I believe you suggested rest Cassandra,' Morpheus' deep voice gently boomed out.

'Right, come on I'll show you a palce you can sleep.'

_Harry Potter._

A fake name, a slave name.

Staring at the grey metal above him had occupied him for the better part of an hour. He would grow accustomed to it, but in that hour Harry found out how unbelievably lovely a boring grey ceiling could be, simply because it was real.

He was real.

_Harry Potter _was a figment of some sick computer's imagination. If they had one. Or rather, Voldemort was and… Why was he bothering with people that didn't exist?

_They do exist, _He chided himself, _They just haven't woken up. _

A fierce desire to free everyone bubbled in him. Everyone. They all deserved to be free.

_But not all can handle it._ Morpheus' voice boomed again, in his head.

His thoughts wandered to his lost abilities. He was no longer a wizard. Would he miss magic?

His stomach tightened. Yes, of course he would be able to use spells if he wanted in the Matrix, but here… magic wasn't real. It was possible that it never was. Harry's ruminations stopped at that point. He let the realization sink in.

No longer a Wizard. No longer bound. The first Wizard to be freed. No more magic. He used to be a Wizard.

_Wizard,_ he mused, _well Hogwarts, fake life, I shall take a name in remembrance of you. I am Wizard, the freed Harry Potter. _

'Hey! Wizard-boy, you wanna eat?' An unfamiliar female voice permeated the chamber.

'Be right there!' He answered.

He was hungry.


	3. Chapter 3

_Disclaimer: Harry Potter is JK Rowling's, The Matrix is The Wachowski Brothers'._

Draco Malfoy exited the small internet café and started heading back to Diagon Alley. The bustle of London muted his thoughts, and he was confused by the onslaught of pedestrians, he had always marveled at the sheer number of muggles in the world. His father sneered at it, called it a disgusting abundance of an inferior breed. Draco had never disagreed, but he still felt amazed when confronted with a London crowd. 

Quickly he bumped and fought through the onslaught to get to the corner where the Leaky Cauldron was. Smart business move, placing an Inn right where the gateway was, he remarked mentally.

As he rounded the corner, he suddenly perceived danger. Draco Malfoy was not a Slytherin for no reason. Regardless of the number of times when Balise and Theodore outsmarted him, he was extremely perceptive, despite his arrogance. One of the things he was most perceptive about was danger.

Not that you needed perceptiveness when three serious faced men in black suits with very dark sunglasses hiding there eyes were pushing through the crowd at an alarming rate looking straight at you, clearly cutting you off from safety.

Draco paused, made eye contact, turned and ran.

What happned next was quick, and blurred, too quick and blurred. In a rare moment of following his gut feeling, he decided on no rational basis that these men, who were making him very nervous should be avoided. He crossed over three streets and caused five cars to come to a screeching halt with their drivers screaming wild obscenities, but one car forced him to halt. And he breathing heavily and very aware of the danger still pursuing him, was able to find the energy to gasp out a sentence pleading something, but nevertheless was pulled in by a very pretty – he noted – woman with spiky almost white hair and forcefully told to shut up while she pointed a shiny metal object which looked like the letter L out the window, and screamed into a little black box at someone to check him for bugs.

Draco did not feel like he had any bugs, and his pristine, little prince-like self had rested well enough to start making demands about who, how and why these people were treating him like this, and to inform them of just how much power he had over Muggles like them. He assumed. He was rewarded with a punch to the nose from the woman next to him and a lovely little berating from the driver, who had lovely tanned skin and whiskey coloured eyes.

Before he knew it, he was offered a red pill, which he was told would give truth, which was ugly, but worth the trouble, and a blue pill, which would take him back and give an effect similar to Obliviate.

The moment of choosing the red pill, he would remember, was the moment which he felt most right.

The rest was imagery for Draco, pain, fluid, then more fluid, then sliding downwards, then cold… hard…. metal.

The first time Harry entered Zion, he had an inexplicable feeling. One of regret, joy and nervousness, which he couldn't explain. Now it was a feeling akin to what he had felt at Hogwarts, at home.

Being only fifteen and untrained, he couldn't yet join a crew. Morpheus had promised The Kid and him a place after they finished training and studying in their chosen fields. Not sneaking on board the _Nyx_, Morpheus' new ship, was a condition later added once Morpheus felt the two popping up out of the metal work once the ship was a good long way from Zion was too annoying. He was tired of telling the pair that they were not doing anything more productive than collecting metal resources for rebuilding, and should they really want to 'serve Zion' they'd be more useful learning their trades and rebuilding there.

Harry just thought Morpheus was annoyed at hearing Mifune's unsubtle remarks about 'knowing your ship'. Once relayed to Morpheus this got him an amused look from Morpheus and two month doing kitchen duty after meals in Zion's cafeteria. Harry had never disliked food so much.

Trained people were badly needed, for ships, for rebuilding. Harry recalled the first sight of Zion, the rocks seemed like they had been shot off, and there was still debris left from the battle near the sides, with cracked stone and bent beams scattered everywhere. Red tape was crudely distributed over the floor, sanctioning off certain areas, some which seemed about to collapse even to his untrained eye, others he would have walked over readily. But what caught his eye was in the very middle. Destroyed on one side but intact in the middle, opposite to the closing dock doors was the entrance to the city of Zion. A silver gateway which traveled up half the cave wall, with light scintillating off of it, illuminating his eyes, a worker was at the very top, lovingly beating and mending and renewing the wounded metal.

It was a pleasant surprise later on, while in training, he found that he enjoyed fixing and rebuilding, hammering and welding metal. So while the Kid has started specializing in Medical training, Harry went on to Mechanics and Craftsmanship, Morpheus was pleased with this outcome.

Now Harry bounded across Zion's main dome, the one which was connected to the docks, lookinf for a bounce of red hair, and searching hard for any sign of it, but only found the Kid come bounding across towards him.

'Hey! They've freed another wizard, he's on the _Nyx_ right now!' He cried excitedly.

Harry's eyes went wide with surprise, 'Do you know where he's from?'

' Britain.' _Damn._ 'Come on let's go see!'

Reluctantly, he went along, he really did not want an hour of 'The Boy-Who-Lived!', although Morpheus and some select people knew of his history in the Matrix, no one treated it with much importance, and Harry wanted to keep it that way.

Dreading seeing one of his classmates, or worse, Ron or Hermione, he marched right behind the Kid up the _Nyx's _platform, and into its medical room.

He couldn't hide his shock.

Although he was bald and looked far too sickly, there was no mistaking the figure on the sanitised medical bed.

_Draco Malfoy._


End file.
